OUR VIEW: Fatal wreck requires look at safety of crossings

Growth of Murfreesboro continues to mean more traffic and combined with efforts to increase access to people with disabilities, the community in general and Middle Tennessee State University face more safety concerns.

The accident that recently killed an MTSU student near campus again has brought this issue into focus.

Circumstances of that fatal accident still are under investigation, but the student in a wheelchair was trying to cross the street when a dump truck hit him. He was transported to Saint Thomas Rutherford Hospital where he died from his wounds.

Responding to that accident, a reader of the DNJ has questioned whether traffic signals on and near the campus provide adequate crossing times for pedestrians and those who may be in wheelchairs. The reader questions the quality of sidewalks on campus and its effect on the mobility of people in wheelchairs.

Murfreesboro also has faced this question with complaints about the quality of sidewalks on South Church Street and its effects on the mobility of people in wheelchairs. The city has been working to improve the quality of those sidewalks.

As the "graying" of America continues, city planners can assume that the number of people in wheelchairs is going to increase. At the same time, efforts to promote exercise for good health may be bringing more people out of their cars and onto sidewalks and into bike lanes.

Any travel on the city's busy thoroughfares and stops at busy intersections, however, show that transportation planning has not provided much compatibility for those who travel in cars and those using other transportation options. Motorists also are not always willing to accommodate such compatibility.

Murfreesboro is preparing rather nervously for a multi-million project to ease flow of traffic through the city's busiest intersection. That new bridge may become a monument to motoring, but it does not address all of the personal transportation issues that those in this community face.

Such an issue is use of motorized wheelchairs for street travel that may even involve efforts to transport passengers. Those who are trying to use motorized wheelchairs to replace their cars may be trying to continue their transportation independence, but they also may be exceeding the capability of their equipment and endangering their safety.

Further study of meeting individual transportation needs safely would be useful as population growth continues.

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OUR VIEW: Fatal wreck requires look at safety of crossings

Growth of Murfreesboro continues to mean more traffic and combined with efforts to increase access to people with disabilities, the community in general and Middle Tennessee State University face